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Friday, March 29, 2013

The Changing Face of Evil

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Clearly, 2375 is not a good year to visit San Francisco. Or to visit Ben Sisko, who is bound to be in a terrible mood.

The Dominion chose well when they brought the Breen race into their war with the United Federation of Planets: a direct assault on Starfleet HQ is something not even the Klingons ever achieved. Those Breen are real go-getters! Very admirable work... uh, I mean, GO EARTH! These colours do not run!

As if his new wife semi-intentionally burning his beloved bell peppers to get even with him when he tries to make her take a vacation wasn't bad enough, Captain Sisko also narrowly avoids exploding at the biggest space battle setback yet. Scores of Alliance vessels (mainly Federation and Romulan) are struck down by a fancy-new Breen power siphon, including that brave little toaster: Defiant. The eventual owners of the Chin'toka system should look into the burgeoning field of salvage... once the plasma fires go out and the giant frozen clouds of red and green blood dissipate.

The female shapeshifter makes sure her troops let the escape pods do their escape thing. Lots and lots of demoralized enemies means spreading tales of Dominion bad-assery... somehow still very necessary at this late stage? This should stop that SISKO character fighting back... for about a week.

But what's this? Coming up from behind? Why, it's those heroic-slash-treacherous Cardassians. Instead of doing what they asked for and just handing Cardassia the conquered universe on a shiny silver platter, those Dominion jerks have mostly been riding to victory on the backs of seven million dead space lizards. Now the space lizards rise up against their re-branded oppressors when Legate Damar begins to speechify.

Bajor's Kai Winn is shocked when her assistant Sobor discovers her own personal space lizard, Dukat, is not all he claimed. Further discoveries on Sobor's part are necessarily limited when Winn discovers what substance is required to read ancient forbidden Pah-Wraith texts. Here's a hint: may contain platelets.

"The Changing Face of Evil" continues the rock-solid. slam-bag, gee-whiz, ka-blooey final chapter. Did I mention 'P-tchoo! P-tchoo!'? Because it has plenty of that, too.